Dying asylum seeker on hunger strike must stay in custody, says high court

Lawyers describe as a death sentence the ruling against Isa Muazu, 45, from Nigeria, who has refused food for 85 days

Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow airport. Ifa Muaza, who has not eaten for almost three months, claimed asylum because he claimed members of Boko Haram would kill him. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

A failed asylum seeker said to be near death following an 85-day hunger strike in protest at his detention must remain in custody, the high court ruled on Tuesday.

Isa Muazu, 45, from Nigeria, has been refusing food for nearly three months. He is being held in Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, near Heathrow.

His lawyers have described the ruling as a death sentence and called on the home secretary to save his life.

Last week, the Home Office issued an "end of life plan" for him. He was first deemed medically unfit to be detained in October, but has remained in custody.

Ministers' refusal to release him has been interpreted as evidence of a more hardline approach, following the freeing in June of four asylum detainees who were on hunger strike in protest at their detention.

Last week, a source at Harmondsworth said staff have been warned to expect a hunger striker to die. The decision not to release Muazu was taken at ministerial level, the source added.

Muazu claims he left his home because members of Boko Haram, a hardline Islamist group, threatened to kill him unless he joined them. Last Thursday, the US named the group as a terrorist organisation.

Speaking to the Guardian from Harmondsworth last week, Muazu said he was prepared to die rather than return to Nigeria. "I was afraid, but now I am a skeleton and almost dead. There is so little of me left and I am not afraid. But they – the authorities – have not treated me as a human being," he said.

Muazu's solicitor is Sue Willman from Deighton Pierce Glynn. She said the ruling on Tuesday by Mr Justice Ouseley was effectively a death sentence on her client.

Willman said she was considering an appeal but that her client was so weak, she fears any legal move would be too late to save him. "I call on Theresa May to show clemency and save this man's life" she added.

A Home Office spokesman said the department did not comment on individual cases.

• This article was amended on 6 December 2013. The earlier version misspelled Isa Muazu's name as Ifa Muaza.